


To Palest Rose

by redandgold



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, Rated for swearing, Rebound, Recovery, kind of angsty fluff???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 07:14:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3682923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you see someone with a hole in their life, naturally you do your best to step in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Palest Rose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redluxite (harlequindreaming)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/harlequindreaming/gifts).



> Short ficlet - sort of a what happened after Becks left? thing. I just imagine Scholesy bothering Gaz in his own, strange way, making sure that he's okay. Thank you @harlequindreaming for being the most wonderful person, I am eternally grateful <3
> 
> Title is from James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and it is this I leave you with:
> 
> _"A world, a glimmer or a flower? Glimmering and trembling, trembling and unfolding, a breaking light, an opening flower, it spread in endless succession to itself, breaking in full crimson and unfolding and fading to palest rose, leaf by leaf and wave of lightby wave of light, flooding all the heavens with its soft flushes, every flush deeper than the other."_

It’s not that Paul Scholes and Gary Neville are very different people. It’s that they’re _very_ different people. Gaz is the one who barges into the gaffer’s office at 6am in the morning, blasting the poor chap’s ear off while talking for England. Scholesy rates any day without having to speak a single word amongst the best days of his life. Gaz, Scholesy remembers, went to dinner with him once, and the one-man conversation made the food even better. So when Gary Neville starts to behave like Paul Scholes, something is not right in the world.

The reason, of course, is right before anyone’s eyes – or rather, _not_ before. The other lads miss it too, the tousled blond mop, twinkling eyes, leather seats. (“No more Spice girls either,” Butty had joked ruefully. “Is Ginger single, do you think?”)

But they learn to get over it. You had to pick yourself up again, from the falls. That’s the point – pain only exists so that overcoming it will be all the sweeter.

Gaz doesn’t get over it. Gaz runs by himself during trainings. Kicks the ball against the back-alley wall, the rhythmic thumping drilling into everyone’s skulls. Jumps onto the train and goes off, god knows where. Sits in front of Old Trafford, one of those rickety old benches – just sits. As if he’s waiting for something.

Scholesy knows it’s not going to come, what it is that he’s waiting for. He looks in the mirror – well, ginger, but turning blond. Definitely incomparable in terms of face, haircut, height. Probably incomparable in terms of personality. (Turtles to lions. What to be done.)

But he might as well give it a shot. You have to fall to pick yourself up again, and all that.

The next time he sees Gaz sitting on the bench, Scholesy steps forward – takes a seat next to him. Gaz flicks his eyes up, turns to look, opens his mouth to say something, talker for England that he is. “What the fuck are you doing, Scholesy?”

Scholesy says nothing. Stares straight ahead (and if Gaz looked down he would’ve seen the fingers, digging tightly into the cracked wood, white as the shirts in Madrid), keeps his mouth shut. Gaz tries again, his voice quivering for reasons he doesn’t know. “Scholesy. Scholesy, go away.”

So he does.

The next week Gaz is back on the bench. So Scholesy comes and sits, one more time. Picks himself up again. Still doesn’t look – still says nothing – still pushing his fingers into the splinters (you know, because some plonker thought it up once, if you hurt maybe you can take it away from them). He can hear Gaz’s voice, “Scholesy,” the bury twang dropping the ‘y’. “No. No.”

No. Scholesy can imagine another conversation that went like that, tousled blond hair and all.

Next week – next week – the bench creaks under the weight, hardly used to being this frequented – speak. Silence. Leave. Repeat. Until one day – one day Scholesy turns his head back, looks Gaz right in the eye. And he tries very hard to say something but it all comes down to one word. He says: “Gaz.”

(Gary Alexander Neville when I am sat next to you there is nothing in the world that could move me from my seat.)

He turns back away. The sun is rising. There will be no more waiting; what, after all, are lions to turtles? And Gary Alexander Neville, who has spent all his life only knowing how to talk, shuts up.

 


End file.
